Education for Such a Time As This

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E.A. Sutherland Education Association

Plenary Sessions

John Bradshaw

The Great Object

Jim Ingersoll

War!

Ken Caviness

Faith and Science

Lisa Beardsley-Hardy

Learning From Work

Chester Clark

Education and Redemption Are One

Doug Baker

Harriett Clark

Steve Dickman

Panel: Education and Character Development

A Faithful Priest

While We Wait

It's good to be here with you on this Sabbath day.

And I trust that like you, you've had a busy...

And it's just something special every week about the Sabbath.

It doesn't grow old, it doesn't get out of style.

The Sabbath is every week such a refreshing and such a blessing.

And tonight I'm very honored to be able to spend this time with you.

To me it sounds like we're in an echo chamber a little bit, but as long as you can understand what I'm saying, that's good.

Those acoustics serve us very well when we're singing our hymns, don't they?

It took me back all the way to, I felt like I was at Washita Hills with a whole bunch of young people lustily singing hymns again.

Well I feel tonight like I'm speaking to the choir a bit.

I know that you come from, I think mostly from supporting ministries, from self-supporting schools, schools that we would presume are seeking, striving for that higher ground, and educationally that higher ground, along the lines of the Madison Order of education, we might say.

I like to think of it more of an Adventist Order of education, because I think that the only thing that happened differently at Madison and Avondale and other places where schools were founded with the benefit of Ellen White's counsel on education was that they had those ideas right there before them.

As we look at history, as we look at the history of Adventist education, we find that not every Adventist educator was as fortunate as McGann and Sutherland were.

Not every Adventist educator had the advantage of hundreds, even thousands, of pages of inspired counsel on the topic of Education if we go all the way back to 1852 We find that there were people among the Adventist little flock who did not believe that education was important at all Really not on any level in fact they they argued that the the Second Coming was still so near that they didn't need to worry about schools and schooling for their kids it was this group of people that James White took to task And he wrote a number of articles in his periodicals, in his literature that he was sending out to this scattered group of believers, and he rebuked them for this concept.

And his burden for the training of young people was intense enough that he began what we know as the Youth Instructors Magazine.

This was for young people to help them understand their role in Adventism, in this movement that was afoot.

Perhaps partially in response to James White's writing on the subject, a number of schools began in 1853 and 1854, mostly in New York.

The best known was 1 in Bucks Bridge, New York, taught by the 19-year-old Martha Byington.

Most of the schools, however, died out within a couple of years.

It was the experience that these young people had had a hard time in public schools, and they tried for a few years to run these small schools.

And well, in 1855, the whites moved to Battle Creek from Rochester.

And The fledgling Adventists who moved with them began a church school that was operated for about 6 years in the late 1850s.

It was discontinued, however, when nearby where the Adventist settlement was, a brand new well-equipped public school was opened And the Adventist school was closed.

Now at that time, most of the Adventist young people were actually not going through any type of higher learning, they would typically go through 8 grades.

And the Adventist young people in Battle Creek, the white boys among them, when they finished their 8 grades of schooling at the little public school there, They would generally get a job working at the press and they would be put into the service of the mission of the church.

And so it was in the summer of 1868 that Edson White noticed a stranger splitting wood for the boiler that ran the press.

After work, he and 1 of his friends, George States, along with some others, stopped by to get acquainted with this new person they didn't recognize.

They learned his name was Goodloe Bell, And he had 1 time been a student at a pioneering school known as Oberlin College in the early 1800s.

And after finishing college, he had worked as a teacher in various places, but had lost his health through overwork.

Can I hear an amen from 1 of the teachers?

So after this discussion with Goodloe Bell, some of the boys, Edson White and George States and some others, began to urge him to actually teach them.

They had finished their primary school, They had gone to work, but they had a hunger for more learning.

So, in the summer of 1868, Goodloe Bell began to teach in the long warm evenings about 12 Adventist boys.

And it was quite an auspicious group of young people.

Looking back, The 2 white boys, Willie and Edson, were among them, and also 2 of J.P.

Kellogg's sons, Will Keith and John Harvey.

And these, of course, individuals would go on to make their mark, not only on the church, but also in the world as well.

And so the old dilapidated press building that J.P.

Kellogg had earlier given or built for the press was pressed again into service.

Bell and his family moved into the downstairs after they patched it up a bit.

And the upstairs long low ceiling room was used as the church school.

Well, it wasn't a church school because it wasn't really official yet.

It wouldn't be for another 4 years that it would become an official school.

In 1872, the General Conference Committee was so impressed by Goodloe Bell's work that they voted to officially make it the first Adventist school.

Maxwell, Mervyn Maxwell, there was also a lot of interaction happening between Ellen White and Goodloe Bell during this time.

She really appreciated his discipline that he worked with the students with.

But we have to remember 1 thing, and this is surprising to many Adventists and even many Adventist educators.

Ellen White, up to this time, had actually not written anything regarding education.

1872, she writes her first message that is specifically designed to address Adventist education.

And we might assume, and some do assume, that Adventist education was founded, or was birthed, at the behest of the writings of Ellen White and the spirit of prophecy.

In Battle Creek, they had already had a number of years of experience in starting the school and operating the school when Ellen White writes her first counsel.

It's in Testimony 22 of 1872 and it starts like this.

It is the nicest work ever assumed by men and women to deal with youthful minds.

You've probably read that and you know that the definition of nicest in 1872 varies somewhat from our understanding of the word today.

The nicest work, a nice work was like a watchmaker did.

It required meticulous choice, tactful handling, careful consideration, precise or scrupulous conduct.

And Ellen White says It is the nicest work ever assumed by men and women to deal with youthful mind.

She goes on, the greatest care should be taken in education of youth to vary the manner of instruction so as to call forth the high and noble powers of the mind.

Well, you can understand that with Ellen White's counsel, there were changes to be made because really, well, good little Bell had the experience of Oberlin.

And Oberlin, if you're not familiar with it, Oberlin had been sort of a pioneering school of its own, in its own right, in the early 1800s.

Well, at first, he taught there, but later he was the president of the school.

Charles Finney was sort of the Billy Graham of the early 1800s.

He was the Presbyterian revivalist, a pietist really in nature, but he was the revivalist and he was attached very intimately with Oberlin College.

It was a college that put students to work.

They built their own cottages and lived in them instead of large dormitories.

And so this was a pioneering area as well.

In fact, when Goodloe Bell was sick, he was not an Adventist by the way, when Edson White and George States were talking to him on that day in 1868, he had heard about Battle Creek and he'd heard about the Adventists and he thought they reminded him a lot of the sort of spirit and modalities of Oberlin when he was a student there.

And he had been attracted to come and to get his health restored at the Western Institute of Health Reform.

And so, this was something that he was somewhat reform-minded.

But as they began to make this an official school, they realized or they desired somebody with more letters behind their name.

They found a man, a young man, by the name of Sidney Brownsberger.

And this is after Ellen White has been writing some messages about what kind of a school should be established in Battle Creek.

In fact, they had found a piece of property.

And I have to be careful because I love history.

And so I might get a little bit off the topic sometimes.

But basically, Ellen White was guiding them as they were looking at a number of pieces of property.

1 was an old fairgrounds outside of town.

And they were looking at these 2 pieces of property.

And Ellen White basically said, you know, either 1 of these would do quite well, and satisfied that whatever choice was made, it would be all right.

She left on the train and went to California.

However, after she left, another piece of property came available.

Series

Plenary Sessions

Education and Redemption Are One

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Gardening, Mission, and the End

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 5

48m

Adventist Education: Respectable and Conventional

58m

Talking Points, 4th Quarter 2020: Education

04 The Eyes of the Lord

29m

Norman McNulty Weekend

The Great Controversy Unmasked

51m

Education

The Core of Adventist Education is Not Common

1h 5m

ASI 2012 Seminar: It's Time

Stand Firm

1h 22m

Plenary Sessions

Taught by God

43m

Plenary

Learning to Be Human Again

1h 14m

The Peril of Adventist Education

49m

The Secret to Power

40m

Continuing the Reformation

Educational Reform

1h

The Bible and End Time Education

52m

Sound Doctrine